Last month, Dr. Jim Martens gave a talk at Red Deer College on “What Might Have Been Left Behind: the Female Blues Singer in the Age of Liberal Reform.” A lot of male African-Americans made the jump into the United States mainstream following WWII, but that wasn’t the case for many of the women. And those that did “make it”, lost a lot of their edge. Here’s a playlist from the lecture – with music from women singing about drinking, drugs, VD, poverty, trouble, pleasure, and having the blues: